Philip Rosedale founded Linden Lab, the company behind the virtual world Second Life. He was interviewed by Axios about the metaverse, Facebook and the future for virtual worlds.
- Of the metaverse, he says: “I think what we’ve learned — and somewhat with some sadness, given the work that I’ve done, I would have to agree — is that it’s not for everybody, and maybe it’s never for everybody.”
- And of Meta’s chances of succeeding with their new metaverse project: “Well, I hope they don’t.”
He goes on to say:
Rosedale highlights lessons learned from “Second Life.”
- “People can come together in an online place and actually treat each other well,” he said, noting the conviviality of many of the service’s users.
- But people, in general, didn’t want to spend long periods of time in it. “I was saying that almost immediately we were all going to be spending television length durations of time or something like that in the virtual world, doing things with people. And that part was definitely not true.”
- Rosedale cites many people’s discomfort with controlling avatar versions of themselves and communicating that way with others.
The whole article is worth a read and brings a counterpoint to all the metaverse hype. Rosedale certainly has more experience than most in this arena. He is not completely bearish and the article goes on to give his hopes for how the Metaverse can succeed.
you’d think technology has improved by miles since Second Life, with AR and AI enhancements, so that today a virtual world could be made a lot more appealing, and only get more realistic over time.
Good points.